The Art of Social Listening: 7 Tools to Improve this Task An integral part of any social media effort is listening. Whether you are in the process of preparing a social media strategy or your campaign is up and running, it is essential to know what your audience is saying. Why you may ask? Well there are a number of reasons but I daresay the most important is that any successful social media campaign must be based on fulfilling the need(s) of its customers. Social Listening not only allows the listener to collect information about their audience and acquire an understanding of their wants and needs, but it can also be used to find out what is being said about the Brand and its competition. Let’s take a quick look at 7 Social Media listening tools small businesses can use to track their mentions across the web: 1.SocialMention This social media search and analysis platform was first brought to my attention by my Twitter pal @Ileane of Basic Blog Tips. 2.Addictomatic 3.Twitter Search 4.Google Alerts 5.WorkStreamer 6.LinkedIn Signal 7.